Apple HomePod first listen: not enough punch for the price

Yes it's been longer coming than intended, but as of yesterday you can now pre-order Apple's music speaker with Siri built-in - the HomePod. But is it any good? We got a chance to hear the speaker before launch for an early listen.

First unveiled at Apple's World Wide Developer Conference in June 2017, Apple's competitor device to the Amazon Echo and Google Home costs £319 and comes in white or space grey.

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Breaking into an established market, Apple has brought its now customary minimalist design flair to the HomePod, as it looks to compete not only with the offerings from Google and Amazon, but also the versions from established speaker manufacturers such as Sonos and its Alexa-powered One.

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The diminutive HomePod comes in at just under 18cm tall and 2.5kg and includes acoustic signal processing, audio beam-forming and echo cancellation, all powered by Apple’s A8 chip.

A feature that is now becoming more common, the speaker can tell where it is located in a room, and automatically adjusts the audio accordingly. Cleverly, it also knows it's been moved thanks to the on-board accelerometer and so automatically runs this location programme when you switch the HomePod's position or turn it off at the plug.

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Squeezed into that small body, a custom subwoofer is joined by an array of seven beam-forming tweeters to provide the high frequency, supposedly with the added benefit of directional control.

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Six built-in microphones mean that Siri can hear your commands from across the room even while music is playing - and this was indeed the case in our demo. And setup is as simple as holding an iPhone next to the HomePod and within seconds you're away. You can fine-tune settings via the app.

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So, how does it sound? First up on our demo is Ariana Grande's Side to Side. What becomes immediately apparent is the formidable bass the HomePod kicks out. What's more, the sound remains constant as you walk around the room, no doubt thanks to those beam-forming tweeters. The vocals are clear as a bell, too.

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It's not all good news, however. There is a distinct lack of mid-range, leaving you feeling that something is missing in the mix.

Next up, Gregory Porter and Holding On (featuring Kem). Once again the high frequencies are dealt with superbly. Finger snaps are crisp, the reverb precise and vocals are particularly clear and well reproduced.

But as we go through My Shot from the musical Hamilton and Frozen's Let It Go once again the middle seems to take a back seat to the high and low frequencies. The result is that the sound reproduction is not as powerful as it should be - Let It Go in particular is a big song. A speaker such as this should really punch it out, but not in this admittedly brief demonstration.

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Tom Petty's Won't Back Down produces a more promising soundscape, however. It's an older recording than the other demo tracks but there is somehow more balance in sound. Oddly now its a little lacking in bass, but overall this is more like it.

Finally, Ed Sheeran's Shape Of You is also much better than what has come before with loads of attack - but this tune relies heavily on the high frequencies, so perhaps it's no surprise it sounds so good on the HomePod.

An update coming later this year will let you link two HomePods together for stereo sound, much like competitor speakers. Multiroom will also come in the same update when Airplay 2 is rolled out.

The integration of Siri is most welcome on the HomePod, and it can do everything Siri can do for you on your iPhone. However, this also means that you get the failings of Siri as well as the benefits. Three times in our short demo Siri failed to understand what was being asked of it.

Where Siri excels is how you can ask trivia questions on what is playing and who is playing it, and also once a week it updates a personal music playlist linked to your Apple Music account. And herein lies another flaw: for now you will have to use an Apple Music account if you want to use Siri as a control.

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We will have much more to say in a full review, but on first impressions while the HomePod looks great, is super simple to set up and is undoubtedly powerful, the sound produced does not immediately match up to its £319 price tag.

To make matters more difficult, Sonos has just responded by announcing it is selling bundles of two Sonos Ones for just £349.

One HomePod with Siri or two Sonos Ones with Alexa? One thing is for sure: Sonos is certainly not taking the arrival of Apple's new baby lying down.